BFGTech 7800 GS OC card artefacts issue

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce' started by martyp, Mar 12, 2010.

  1. martyp

    martyp Member

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    Verto GeForce 4 MX440SE
    Hi all,

    I'm really hoping someone might have come across this one before or have some idea what's causing this.
    I recently purchased two of the above card second hand. Both cards work fine in my PC but in another PC I was upgrading for someone they have trouble with lines streaking across the screen and random artefacts.
    I initially installed the latest NVidia drivers and in both Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 and 3dMark there were lines all over the place and artefacts appearing all over the place.
    I have since installed some 84.x drivers and whilst 3dmark is much much better with all the lines and artefacts pretty much gone, RCT3 is still showing the occasional line or small triangle/artefact. I installed the same 84.x drivers on my PC (due to an unrelated blue screening which turned out to be my RAM). On my PC it seems better but I don't have RCT3 installed on there to be 100% sure but I don't recall any issues at all playing Sims 2 on the latest drivers.

    The affected machine plays videos fine, here is its spec:

    Asus P4S533-VM motherboard with Intel P4 2.8GHz
    650W PSU
    1GB RAM (single DDR)
    Windows XP SP1
    DirectX 9c with Runtimes from Aug09

    I have tried BIOS defaults and reinstalling DirectX and the NVidia drivers several times inc using Driversweeper.

    The other things that I've noticed is with the latest drivers, in the NVidia control panel, the swirling logo has bits missing which seem to keep changing around, including when you click on it. I tried sliding the bar across between quality and performance and still the same.

    I really can't think what else to try?

    Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated...
     
  2. ricardonuno1980

    ricardonuno1980 Banned

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    if you don't have any artifacts while booting (bios before XP logo) and playing video except 3D games then your 7800gs may be bad. you may change new videocard or back to videocard.
     
  3. martyp

    martyp Member

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    Hi ricardonuno,

    The same thing happened with two different 7800GS cards which both worked fine in another machine. Could it really be a card fault? In the sense of incompatibility with that machine's existing hardware?

    Many thanks
     
  4. ricardonuno1980

    ricardonuno1980 Banned

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    ok. your videocard is not bad. :) but your motherboard isn't supported or is bad.
     
    Last edited: Mar 12, 2010

  5. MAD-OGRE

    MAD-OGRE Ancient Guru

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    This 100% an AGP card and Driver problem, the mobo and video cards is fine.
    I have 3 AGP cards that will do this unless I use very old drivers.
     
  6. martyp

    martyp Member

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    Many thanks all, interesting what you say MAD-OGRE about having several old AGP cards that have to run on old drivers.

    This motherboard uses AGP 4X, mine uses 8X but couldn't see that having been the problem, unless with it being an overclocked card?

    With all the tons of drivers available, not just the ones on the NVidia site, is there any way of knowing which might work best?

    I've read posts on various forums suggesting the best drivers for the 7800GS but all about the time the card came out (I appreciate most people have moved on now!)

    Also, if I was to do some testing with all different drivers, can someone please tell me or direct me to a guide that is the best way to remove older drivers?

    At the moment I do the following:

    1) Uninstall NVidia drivers in Add/Remove Programs
    2) Reboot into safe mode
    3) Run driversweeper (and drivercleaner)
    4) Reboot

    The thing I have trouble working out is dealing with the Add New Hardware dialogue that comes up when Windows loads and then stalls the NVidia driver installation? Last time I killed off two rundll32.exe processes to get the NVidia drivers installed.

    Also, Control Panel would crash with an Explorer.exe error when opened which seemed to be caused by the NVidia control panel applet which wasn't removed when I uninstalled it all and ran driversweeper?

    Many thanks
     
  7. MAD-OGRE

    MAD-OGRE Ancient Guru

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    I have runing PC wit a 8x AGP slot and a BFG 7600GS AGP card, if I run any of the drivers listed on NVs site other then the ones listed for the FX500 cards its gets all kinds of artifacts in WOW.
    If Install the drivers for the FX500 cards they are gone, the game is playable.
    Try this driver 175.19 and see if it works for you.
    http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_175.19_whql.html
     
  8. martyp

    martyp Member

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    Excellent, cheers MAD-OGRE, I'll give those a go.

    How would you recommend removing all traces of the old drivers, is running driversweeper in Safe Mode sufficient?

    Many thanks
     
  9. GeoD

    GeoD Maha Guru

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    +1 for the drivers.

    i had 2 7800gs cards. one died on me, so i returned it and got a replacement. both cards had problems with new drivers and i eventually i had to settle on 92.29 or something like that. anything newer would give artifacts. try out the 175's. i moved onto pcie before these came out so maybe they will work.
     
  10. martyp

    martyp Member

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    175 drivers

    Hi all,

    I just did some testing with the 175 drivers, 3dmark ran beautifully, much better. Unfortunately there were still artifacts appearing in Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. My gf believes they weren't there at all when on the 84.x drivers...
    I tried reinstalling RCT3, changing different graphics options etc. I'm wondering whether to try some other drivers. What would be next to try after the 175s?

    Many thanks
     

  11. GeoD

    GeoD Maha Guru

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    its an older game and an old card. the best/newest drivers i was able to to run on my 7800gs were 92.29 or some thing close to that. anything newer driver wise gave me issues...unless it was a brand new game...but then all the old ones were fubar...
     
  12. martyp

    martyp Member

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    I've kind of worked something out...
    I installed a demo of Doom 3 and also Crysis and both played perfectly, no artifacts/polygons or anything. I then played RCT3 and it was fine...
    When the games load the fan on the GPU spins up quite loudly.
    I rebooted, left the PC for about an hour or so, tried RCT3 again and there were loads of artifacts/polygons all over the place again. I then played the demo of Crysis with the fan going fast the whole time and then went back to RCT3 and the artifacts/polygons were barely there at all (I think I saw one).
    My thoughts are now that the card has an issue when cold?
     
  13. martyp

    martyp Member

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    seems to be a temp problem...

    hi all,
    Further to my last post I decided to test the temp aspect. I booted the pc from cold and Ati tools reported the temp as 33c. I went straight into rollercoaster tycoon 3 and there were loads of artifacts. I then played call of duty for about 10 mins which was absolutely fine. The card was then at 38c, or 45c according to speedfan. I went into rct3 and there was the artifacts had all gone. I think I saw one at the start but overall it was fine. The gpu fan is on full blast as windows loads and when the game starts but often stays on full blast even for a few mins after windows has fully loaded...
    I've read other posts about an issue with the fan speed and bios on this card?
    Can anyone advise further? I fear messing with the bios as it would invalidate the warranty?
    Many thanks
     
  14. martyp

    martyp Member

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    I've now tried 3dmark06 as well as 3dmark05 and both exhibit strange cobweb like lines on the characters and also large blocks and artifacts obscuring things. This seems to happen after playing another game for a while like RCT3 or Crysis. I've found that if the machine is rebooted then the 3dmark programs don't have this issue if they are tested before any games?
    I did have another odd issue the other night where the machine was rebooted and the BIOS didn't recognise the microcode of the new CPU for some strange reason followed by a system disk failure message and the BIOS having difficulty detecting the HD when booting…
    I reset the CMOS by shorting the solder points after flashing to the latest Beta BIOS and both those issues seem to have gone. Also the artifacts that appear in RCT3 seem to disappear after about 5 minutes of gameplay. They seem more evident in drivers after 9x series ones and clear up quicker in the 8x series ones. BFG have recommended 94.24 for the 7800GS OC which I am now using.
    They also suggested an issue with the PSU but I have now checked with a multimeter under varying loads and there is very little variance in the 3.3v, 5v and 12v rails. The 12v in particular ranges between 11.9 and 12.1, mostly between 11.98 and 12.05.
     
  15. martyp

    martyp Member

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    so confused...

    I think I've given up with this PC now, at least with the current hardware.
    Basically, I installed the hardware at my house with the machine plugged into my KVM switch and no boot issues at all.
    I took it round to the owner's house and plugged their USB keyboard in (my KVM is PS2) and broadband cable and printer and speakers. It worked fine until it was rebooted then got the non system disk or disk error - the BIOS couldn't see the hard drive…
    I took it back to my house, it was completely fine. I had it for a few days, rebooted…rebooted….rebooted…
    I took it back to their house last night, switched it on and straight away 'non system disk or disk error' - the BIOS again wasn't seeing their Hard disk?!!
    I tested all the PSU voltages, changed just about everything, including the monitor, keyboard, tried with just the keyboard plugged in, reset the CMOS…
    Tried default settings. No matter what I did it kept saying 'Primary Master - None'
    If I went into the BIOS and selected the primary hard drive it saw it, saved changes and it booted into Windows.
    Switched off and back on again and it wouldn't see the hard drive again!!
    I switched it from cable select to master, nothing else on that IDE cable.

    I tried connecting a 20GB hard disk and it detected it fine each boot. At my house it detected the hard drive each time…??!

    As a last straw, I removed the GeForce 7800 GS OC card and put in the old card, an MX420SE. The BIOS saw the HD every boot, no problems.
    I tried then with my old FX 5500 and again, the BIOS saw the hard drive fine.

    For some really odd reason, the BIOS could not see the WD2500AAJB (250GB) hard drive when the BFGTech 7800 GS OC graphics card was installed??!

    My only thoughts were some kind of electrical interference affecting the BIOS or too much amperage being required by both those devices. The PSU was rated to 23A on 12v and had a 650W output though and again, worked fine at my house?!

    I tried setting the BIOS to 'halt on no errors' etc. The only thing I didn't try was setting the BIOS to see the HD as User defined as I didn't have the parameters at the time and it seemed to be unable to detect the HD when booting at all.
     

  16. GeoD

    GeoD Maha Guru

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    i can only think of two things. either the psu is on its way out or has a bad connection somewhere, so try another one if possible. or that your customer/friend has a poor electrical connection and this is causing the problems.

    as for the drivers 94.24 should work. anything later than that gave me issues with some games. if you still have artifacts try 92.XX drivers since they were probably the best i had for that card. http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?cat=10&sort=&page=3

    using drivers this old may cause games that came out after them to not run well. so crysis may run like crap or have artifacts, but older games like doom3 should be fine. this is usually the case with drivers. older games are more or less dropped as new games come out.
     
  17. martyp

    martyp Member

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    Hi GeoD,
    Many thanks for the reply. It was really odd how I don't seem to have any problems at my house. When at their house I did ask to plug directly into a mains socket as opposed to an extension lead but no luck.
    We thought initially it was down to their monitor also being plugged into the PSU but we connected that to its own power last time so it's not using the PSU anymore.
    I gave up saying they either have the 250GB hard disk or the 7800GS graphics card in the end. I could try with their old PSU again but it was only 350W with 16A on the 12V rail so under minimum spec for the graphics card?

    I did notice more artifacts in RCT3 with the 94.24 drivers compared to the 84.x ones, it seemed to settle after a while, about 5 minutes into the game they had gone away.

    As far as the voltages from the PSU were concerned, I had a multimeter connected up and watched it as I tried all sorts of things on the computer and the voltages stayed within their specified allowed ranges the whole time.

    You really notice the difference now having gone from the 7800GS OC card to my old FX 5500, the frame rates are awful by comparison in 3dmark...
    It was strange that I couldn't see any artifacts at all in Doom 3/Crysis or Call of Duty with either 8x or 9x drivers.
    They're considering maybe trying a different card, say a 6xxxx one...
     

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